Upon a demand from some of the guests to see the "lace school," and the labor teaching as well, Danvers took it on himself to act as conductor of these merry inquisitive parties, and the wonder and interest of the ladies in the school was remarkable to see; and I recall now that Mrs. Opie made her first visit to the burn that afternoon, and within a month had planned her written work concerning it.

It was nearly four before the Duke of Borthwicke arrived, Hugh Pitcairn and Sir Patrick Sullivan coming with him, unannounced, through the west entrance.

His grace looked younger than he did at the time of our last meeting: but his eyes were the same; misty, unholy, and bland. He wore gray cloth of the same accented plainness, and from the time of his entrance stood with his head uncovered in an attitude of great deference to the women-folk; a bearing which accorded poorly with the tales afloat concerning the manner of his private life.

To us, who for the most part knew London but by name, the bearing of this celebrated personage was a matter for interest and study, and if it were in my power to set him forth as he showed himself to us that day there would be none of fair judgment who could blame Nancy for her conduct toward him afterward I can affirm that never from the moment that his eyes fell on her did he remove them from her face. He was accosted by several gentlemen in his progress toward us, but it was with a fixed glance of absorbed admiration of her that he answered them, curtly, as I thought, and as one who brooks no interruption.

Crossing the space toward us he came alone, the forward poise of the body, and more than all the power of his head and chest, fixing the idea I already had of a splendid kind of devil who would make ill-fortune for any who crossed him.

"It is a great pleasure to see you again," he said, bowing low before Nancy.

"You have been away a long time," she answered.

"The longest month that I have ever spent," he returned.

"The Highlands were not merry?" she asked.

"I had no heart for them."

"No?" she said. "I am sorry."

"I should rather, were it mine to choose, that you were glad to have me find them dull," he answered.

"Would that be quite friendly?" she inquired, with a smile of intentional misunderstanding.

"I am scarce asking for friendship," he returned, and there was no mistaking the intent of either word or eye.

"By the way," he continued, "I have ridden half over Scotland and laid by four horses to be here this afternoon; for which," he added, with the little outward wave of his hand which became him so well, "I am claiming no merit; for is there a man who knows you who would have done otherwise?"

A look passed between them, a look which I was at a complete loss to understand, as she answered, with a laugh:

"I think Mr. Pitcairn might successfully have struggled with the temptation of laming horses to see me."

"But," the duke retorted, "as you told me yourself on that memorable night we first met, 'Pitcairn's not rightly a man; he's just a head.'"

"In many ways," responded Nancy, and her eyelids drooped at her own audacity, "in many ways he reminds me of you, your grace!"

The duke smiled back at her with a little drawing together of the eyelids, which I had learned to know so well.

"I have," he said, "nearly a fortnight to spend in Edinburgh, in which I shall make it the effort of my life to show you the difference between us."



CHAPTER XIV

NANCY MEETS HER RIVAL

It was the morning after the outdoor party that Danvers came into the breakfast-room with a pleasant excitement showing in his face.

"I've a present for you," he said, going over to Nancy, who had not left the table.

"For me?" she asked.

"For you—though I'm far from sure that you deserve it, for if there's a man in Edinburgh this morning whom ye haven't in love with ye, he's blind. However," he laughed, "we'll waive that," and he took a box from his pocket and held it above his head.

"Will ye kiss me for it?" he cried.

"I will not," said she decisively.

"Then you sha'n't have it," he said with great determination, moving as though to put it in his pocket.

"I'll go and write some letters, then," she remarked calmly, starting toward the door.

Afraid of losing her society for the morning, mayhap, he put the box on the table and pushed it toward her.

It was a small silver case, strong and firm, with a smaller box of white velvet inside, in which lay a ruby ring—a gem for which men commit crimes and women sin; a gorgeous, sparkling, rosy stone, sending rainbow spots upon the wall, and rendering Nancy radiant and speechless as she slipped it on her finger.

"Is it for me, Dand?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"For whom else would it be, Little Girl?" he answered, and the delight he had in her pleasure was a beautiful and husband-like thing to see.

"But why!" she asked. "Can I take it from him, Jock Stair?" she said, turning to me suddenly.

"A woman can surely take a gift from her future husband with no impropriety," I answered.

"That's true," she said; "but you see there is no betrothal between us, and at the year's end I might have to send it back for some other woman to wear, which would go far toward bringing me to my grave. I am afraid I can't take it yet, Danvers."

"Wear it," he answers. "If ye can't wear it as my betrothed wife, wear it in sign that I love you. Lord Stair hears that I hold it as token of nothing save my own love for you. If it gives you pleasure, Nancy, it's all I ask." At which she did the thing least expected of her by putting her head suddenly down on her hands and bursting into a flood of tears.

"Oh," she cried, "these things are just putting me out of my mind. I wish I was in Heaven, where there is no marrying or giving in marriage!"

There was one point gained, however, for she wore the ring; and with it upon her finger Danvers could never be kept long from her thoughts.

At luncheon of this same day, old Janet McGillavorich, from Mauchline, whom Nancy ranked the chiefest of all her female friends, surprised us by a visit. She was a far-removed cousin of Sandy's, who was constantly back and forth between her own home and Edinburgh by reason of her everlasting lawing.

It seems that her father had left her some property, and by the advices of Hugh Pitcairn she had turned this to great advantage, owning bits of land all over Scotland, from Solway side to John o' Groats.

She was a masculine-looking female, with hair of no particular shade parted over a face very red in color, and with high cheekbones and small gray eyes set at an angle like the Chinese folks. She was above sixty years of age at this time, with a terrible honesty of conduct, great violence of language, and carried things with a high hand wherever she went.

Having heard of Nancy from Hugh Pitcairn four or five years before this, she had demanded to make her acquaintance, upon which Hugh fetched her over to tea one afternoon, and from that time forth she bore an unending grudge against me, that Nancy was not her own.

"And so ye write," she had asked at this first interview; "I never read anything ye wrote, but I'm glad to meet in with any woman who has an aim 'beyond suckling fools and chronicling small-beer.' But ye must be careful what ye write, my dear," she went on, "or ye'll have the whole female population of Scotland clattering after ye. Be orthodox, and never trifle with tales concerning the seventh command. Stick to rhymes like 'fountain and mountain' and 'airy and fairy,' and such like things; for ye'll find that the women who tell tales that would make ye blush, who lead dissolute, unthinking lives, who deceive their husbands, and smell themselves up with Lily-of-the-Valley-water when they go to the kirk, will be the hardest upon ye if ye stray from any accepted thought. They require the correctest thinking in print ye know!"

I never saw Nancy more pleased with any human being than with this fire-eating old lady; and when Janet finished her discourse by the statement, "God be praised! I never read poetry. Shakespeare sickened me of that. This thing of not saying right out what you mean turns my stomach. Padding out some lines to make them a bit longer, and chopping off ends of words to make others shorter, ought to be beneath any reasoning creature." Nancy put her head on the table and laughed until I was afraid she would make herself ill.

It was after the luncheon, while Janet was still with us, that the Hon. Mrs. Erskine and her daughter came to pay us a visit of congratulation on the success of our entertainment. Danvers had gone off to walk, and so it fell upon the three of us to receive these visitors in the music-room, where we were having tea.

The elder lady, whom Sandy insisted had come to Edinburgh to marry me, was an intentional female, with much hair, much rouge, and a pallor heightened by rice-powder, which gave her a very floury and unclean appearance. Her eyes were an indescribable color, resembling the pulp of a grape, and near-set, a thing which I have never been able to abide in man, woman, or child. Her nose was long and peaked, and her mouth dropped at the corners. But it was the strange set of her whole figure which struck my notice again and again. For she was, to use a lumbering expression, all in front of her spine, with neither backward curve to her head, nor her shoulders nor hips, which gave her a peculiarly unpliable appearance. Her voice was high and of a singular penetrating quality, and she had an over-civil manner to us, as of one who has something to gain. Her gown, of blue, had many strange kinds of trimming which seemed both needless and inexpressive, and what with the rouge and the chains and hangings around her neck, she reminded me of nothing so much as a grotesque figure for a Christmas-tree decoration.

When it be added to all of this that she had a fearful habit of emphasizing certain words in a senseless and flippant style, and of waving a lace kerchief constantly, after the manner of a flag, it may be imagined with what joy I relished her society.

"Ah!" she said, "you are alone after the party. What a success it was! A positive triumph, positive! Isabel and I had been told how delightful Edinburgh society was, but we were not prepared for the gaiety we found. It was charming! Positively charming! And how beautiful you looked, my dear," she went on, turning to Nancy. "Of course we'd heard of you—every one in any society at all has heard of you, you know; but you've such style, my dear—positively the belle-air, positively!

"I know you're pleased to hear how your daughter is adored, aren't you, Lord Stair? It's what I say to the dear duchess (the Duchess of Mont Flathers, you know—we're just like sisters!). 'Maria,' I say to her, 'of course I am pleased to have Isabel the rage, as she is—it's only natural, she being my daughter, that I should feel so.' I am enchanted at all the attention she receives, and at the way men rave over her. It's a mother's feeling. One night, I recall, when Danvers Carmichael had positively compromised Isabel by his attentions, for he's always after her, the dear duchess said to me:

"'Anne, this is going too far!' And I said:

"'Dearest, it may be; but I have no heart to stop them. They both look so happy.' And the duchess replied:

"'Anne, your feelings do you credit; and I think it's so sweet and womanly to be so honest about it.'

"'We naturally like to have our children beloved,' I answered, stiffly.

"That's just what I say all of the time!" she went on, as though some one might stop her by a speech of his own. "Just what I say, Lord Stair; both to Alexander Carmichael and his son. How beautiful, how very beautiful the friendship between you is. And between your children as well! Danvers is quite like a brother to your daughter, isn't he?

"I really believe—now don't contradict me," she said, waving her handkerchief at her daughter, "I really believe that Isabel was inclined to be jealous yesterday. Danvers has always been so devoted to her—always, since she was quite a little, little girl; and I am afraid—just a tiny morsel afraid—that it was hard for her to share him.

"Not that you were to blame, dearest," she said, turning to Nancy, "not the very least bit in the world. It was quite plain who claimed your time! Quite plain! His Grace of Borthwicke is positively the most fascinating creature I ever saw—positively. We never can get him in London at all; so I never took my eyes from him; and all the town bowing before him—and he absolutely on his knees before you, my dear! Absolutely!

"Pardon me for mentioning it—forgive me, won't you?—but what a beautiful, exquisite ring! Look, Isabel! Quite like an engagement ring. Now could it—I wonder—could it," peering at it and then at Nancy through her glasses—Nancy, whose eyes had the significant darkness in them which I have mentioned so often.

"It is not an engagement ring," she answered quietly.

And here Janet, who had watched the Hon. Mrs. Erskine in much the same manner as she would have regarded a foolish old cat, came into the talk.

"Since you think so highly of Danvers, Mrs. Erskine, ye must say a good word for him to Nancy Stair. He's my choice for her to marry," she said, looking around with a bland smile.

"And does he want to marry her?" Mrs. Erskine asked, abashed by this directness.

"He told me that he had asked her three times a day ever since they met, and I, for one, hope that she'll think twenty times of him to once she thinks of that devilish John Montrose."

I cared nothing for the silly old Mrs. Erskine, but my heart bled for her daughter, who became a piteous white at the turn the talk had taken, and put her handkerchief to her face, affecting a cough. Nancy saw this and her heart spoke.

"Dandy Carmichael," she says, "talks to you, Mrs. MacGillavorich, to please ye—you lay too much stress by what he says."

But the italicizing lady was routed, and as Janet watched her departure from the window she said:

"Mark my words, John Stair! she's fetched that girl here to marry her to Danvers Carmichael. I've not known Anne Erskine all these years for nothing. The old cat!" she cried.



CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING DANVERS CARMICHAEL AND HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE

It was from the time of the garden party on that Danvers Carmichael and his Grace of Borthwicke were, to speak rudely, walking into each other at every turn of Stair, and it is a task beyond me to tell the strain which came into our affairs with the entrance of Montrose.

Subtle, subtle, subtle! It was the word which followed him everywhere, and it was as difficult to manage him as to handle quicksilver. He flattered with a contradiction; saw nothing unmeant for him to see; bent to the judgment of him with whom he talked; was supple in speech; modest, even to the point of regarding himself as a somewhat humorous failure; told long stories with something of a stagelike jauntiness, of fights in his boyhood, in India, in the House of Lords—and by his own telling was ever the one worsted, the one upon whom the laugh had turned.

For myself, I confessed openly then, as I do now, that I found him the most diverting person I have ever met, and took such pleasure in his company that upon me should rest much of the dirdum of having him at Stair.

There were two things, however, which annoyed me no little concerning his frequent visits to my home. The first of these was the attitude toward him of Father Michel. I was coming out of the new chapel with his grace one morning when we encountered the good father, and I was struck with amazement to see the duke grow suddenly white and give a start backward, with a quick indrawing of the breath which made a choking sound in his throat, and that Father Michel on the instant seemed as a stone man, save for the eyes, which, if I were anything of an interpreter, showed a live hate and an old-time grudge. During this meeting, which was brief to abruptness, Father Michel spoke no word, but bowed low at the first silence which fell between us, taking his way down the braeside upon such business as he had in hand, and no questions were asked after his departure concerning either his origin or his labors, for the duke was ever one who knew the protective power of silence.

After this encounter between them I played a clumsy detective in proving that the two avoided each other and that there had been some interwovenness of interests in the past. Several times when I asked Father Michel to join us at table he gave me flimsy excuses, and once the duke pleaded indisposition when I proposed that he should accompany Father Michel on an inspection of some stained glass which Nancy was having put in the altar windows of the new chapel.

In many ways, therefore, I became fixed in a belief that there was hatred in Father Michel for John Montrose, and a distaste for the good father in the Duke of Borthwicke, such as a man might cherish against one whom he has greatly wronged.

The second trouble, however, was more acute, for it involved the duke's treatment of Dandy Carmichael. While we were of a party Montrose was civil enough, but when the two of them were thrown together the duke would relapse into an insulting silence, such as one carries in the presence of servants; would require to be spoken to twice before answering a question, as though his thoughts were far away; would even hum to himself as though entirely alone; or put the cap to his insolence by taking a book from his pocket and reading, sometimes even marking the rhythm of a verse aloud. So from day to day there was growing a hatred for the duke in Danvers by reason of his jealousy and the accumulative discourtesy which he was obliged to endure.

As for Nancy's conduct to the two of them, if it seemed strange to me, who was her father, it was but natural that it should require some explanation to those less partial to her, and she had the whole town talking over which was the favored suitor. She rode with his grace in the morning, played at billiards with Danvers in the afternoon, perhaps to be off in the evening with McMurtree of Ainswere, who was maudlin in his infatuation for her and whom she pronounced the best dancer out of France.

There were seasons when I could have sworn that she had no thought save for Danvers. I have known her to watch for his coming, to grow restless if his visits were a bit later than expected, to regard him with happy and glowing eyes, and to rest in his presence in a way that flattered him and drew him to her with such a passion of love showing in his fine face that I had joy in the mere sight of him. But these times would pass, and mayhap in a week or less she would be at the Latinity with the duke, heated in her enthusiasm for him, encouraging him in his tale-telling, with gleaming eyes and audacious rejoinders. At these times Dandy fell back for company upon his cousin Isabel, and I have met them frequently riding or driving together, she with a happy, radiant face, and he with the brooding devil in his eye and a sullen look in the smile with which he greeted me.

In his frequent absences from Edinburgh the duke never allowed Nancy's thoughts to wander from him long. A book by special post, an exquisite volume of Fergusson, hand-printed, some foreign posies in a pot, an invitation to come with a party of his English friends to the Highlands, and he added:

"I am sending the list of the guests to your Royal Highness, and if there be some who are not to your liking, I pray you cross them off. Following here," he went on, "the custom usual when one invites Royalty to one's home," playing all the moves which a man knows who has wooed and won many times, but, as it seemed to me, with a real feeling in the game.

At this sort of thing Dandy was a poor rival by reason of his pride, and matters were at something like a gloomy standstill between him and Nancy when I called Sandy into consultation.

"Tragedy will come of it," I tried at length; "but by my hope of Heaven I know no way to handle the affair. Deny the duke the house, and what have ye done to a girl of spirit? Urged her into his arms, and nothing else——"

Sandy's talk was all on Nancy's side, however, which made the situation a bit easier for me.

"You see, it's thiswise with most women," said he. "Give them a husband to dandle them, and some children for them to dandle themselves, and a house to potter round, with some baubles to wear when they're young, and some money in the bank when they're old, and they go along with small agitation of mind until the grave. Not that I'm discounting their value. They're a good conservative element to society, and God intended them for the reproduction of the race, and perhaps they're kept stupid in their minds so that they will not rebel against their manifest destiny.

"It's not like this with Mistress Stair! For she has a grasp of things, and the fearlessness of an unbroken colt, and a mind for the big thoughts of life, and you and I have led her forward in her conduct.

"In the matter of Danvers she is following out the strongest law that we know. 'Tis the natural attraction of the sexes—of the young for the young; but her mind calls for something besides. And 'tis here the duke appeals to her more. Aye! it's all a difficult business," he concluded, "and fate will have to settle it after all, as I've said many a time."

One day when the Little Flower was by me with her sewing I put the matter to her with what deftness I could. Her answers were brief, but directly aimed at the text. She said in effect that marriage was a serious affair, and that she had been bred up with so much liberty that it made the embarking on such an expedition more perilous to her than to most women. She also set forth that in nearly every other enterprise in life one might take a preliminary jaunt, and finding the business little to one's liking, might give it over and start without prejudice in some other.

"In this one affair alone," she ended, "the one of most moment in all of our existence, there is no retracing one's steps with honor if it be found that one has taken the wrong road."

For these reasons she averred it her privilege to look around her with all the intelligence she had in order to make no mistake, both for herself and her future husband.

"For I'm thinking," she said, "there would be trouble afoot if I found, after marriage, the love of which I am capable given over to a man who was not my husband.

"Besides which," she laughed, "I'm not certain whom I am going to marry. There's Robert Burns, now," she cried. "How would you like to have a plowman for a son-in-law, Jock Stair, my daddy O?" and she started off to the Burnside, singing as she went; which was all I could get from her on the subject, one way or another.

It was near the end of September that there began the serious trouble between the duke and Danvers. I was come around from Zachary Twombly's mill, where I had been to pay the hop-pickers, riding alone through the Dead Man's Holm, intending to enter the garden by the break in the south wall. Doubts of the wisdom of the way this child of mine had been reared were going over and over in my mind. I had indeed aimed to make her the finely elemental thing which I conceived a real woman to be; but I found with some perturbation of spirit that the plan would have served better for the general happiness if the men with whom she had to deal had been less accustomed to the conventional woman. They were forever drawing conclusions from her actions which would have held with sound logic had they been applied to any other woman, but with Nancy they were frequently as little to the point as if they had been drawn from the conduct of a Chinese lady.

Thinking these things over, I came by the group of pear-trees, at which point I heard voices on the other side of the wall, and raising myself in the stirrups looked over into the garden.

It was a sunny, warm corner, and a low table, with some chairs, had been placed there, together with a basket of lace-work which Nancy had evidently been overlooking. She was not to be seen, however, although her flowered hat hung on the back of a chair near by.

Sitting before the table was Danvers Carmichael, the cards spread before him, making a solitaire, and at a little distance, holding the bridle of his gray horse, stood the Duke of Borthwicke, who, I judge, had interrupted by his entrance a morning talk between Danvers and Nancy. There was a peculiar gleam in the eyes of Montrose, and a jaunty self-possession which became him well, as he stood and looked down at the man whose temper he had surely tried to the breaking point.

"'Tis a lonesome game you play, Mr. Carmichael," he said, with a significance in his tone which the printed words can not convey.

"There are times when I prefer lonesomeness to the only company available," Danvers returned, and he raised his eyes from the cards and looked Montrose full in the eye as he said it.

"Ah," the duke murmured, and there was a shadow of a smile around his lips, "'tis fortunate to be so pliable. For myself I prefer to play a game with a partner. In fact, the solitariness of my life has been such that I have thought to change it. To be frank with you, I am thinking of marriage."

"The Three Kingdoms will be interested," Danvers returned suavely.

Again the duke smiled. "You compliment me," he said, with a bow. "It all depends on the lady now. There is for me no longer any power of choice; for I think none could see her but to love her," and here he raised his hat with something of a theater's gallantry. "It is Mistress Stair, of course, of whom I speak."

Dandy Carmichael was on his feet in a minute.

"It is but fair to you, your Grace of Borthwicke, to tell you that Mistress Nancy Stair is already bespoken."

"Indeed?" said the duke. "And whom shall I believe? The lady herself denies it."

"She has promised that if she sees none within the year whom she likes better she will be my wife."

"Ah," returned the duke, and again there was a smile. "Am I to gather, then, that Mr. Carmichael considers himself so attractive that he believes it impossible the lady should find, in a whole year, one whom she could prefer?"

There was in the tone that which no man of spirit could have borne, least of all Danvers Carmichael, who knew that for two months the path of the duke had been leading up to this, and there was no hesitation in him. He held several of the unplayed cards in his hand and he struck the duke across the mouth with them.

"Since you are wanting a quarrel, I'll give you cause for one," he said, and I joyed to hear him say it.

Borthwicke took his kerchief from his pocket and drew it across his lips.

"My friends will wait upon you," he said.

"They will be welcomed," Danvers answered, and as the words were spoken I saw Nancy come from the porch door holding a book in her hand, and I rode hastily to the main entrance rather than to place further present embarrassment upon them by having them fear that I had overheard the quarrel between them.

If the duke showed any change whatever in his manner of greeting me it was to appear a bit more frank and careless than ordinary, his voice a trifle smoother, and his countenance more open than I had ever noted it before. He asked me to ride to town with him to look at some old prints which he was for purchasing, and, as we rode off together, turned toward me as a schoolboy might have done, inquiring:

"Did you ever have an old song go over and over in your head, without rhyme or reason, Lord Stair?"

"Many's the time," I answered.

"This morning," he continued, "I woke with one of these attacks, which are o'er frequent with me, and a bit of a rhyme of one of my father's serving-men has been ranting through my brain all the day," and here he broke forth and sang:

"I hae been a devil the most of life, O, but the rue grows bonny wi' thyme, But I ne'er was in hell till I met wi' my wife, And the thyme it is withered and rue is in prime."

"'Tis an up-country tune," I answered in words, but my thought was one of wonderment that a man who had just planned and set on foot the taking of another's life should be so gay and could talk so interestedly on trivial affairs.

Whatever other faults may be mine, indirectness of speech nor a slothful gait when something has to be done were never accredited to me, and I determined to let the duke know exactly what I had heard, as well as my opinion of him in the business which he had stirred up. Turning toward him, with no introduction to the matter whatever, I said:

"Your grace, I am a man old enough to be your father; something of a philosopher and a dreamer, who has let the current of this world's affairs swim by him unnoted for many years—another, more dependent on present issues, might hesitate to speak to a man of such power as yourself in the manner which I have planned to do; but I would forever lose my own self-respect, which I state honestly is of far greater value to me than any opinion which you or another may have of me, if at this time I failed to be open with you. I was an unintentional observer of the scene which just occurred between you and Mr. Carmichael—one in which, to my thinking, you showed to monstrous poor advantage."

If he had denied, or stormed, or affected a hurt honor at the words, they would have but fallen in with the idea I had of him. He did none of these; but, turning, said to me openly and as one in no wise affronted:

"I hate the man for the best reason on earth, Lord Stair."

"And is it your way to try to kill all you hate?"

"Oh, no," he answered, "it is not often necessary."

I can not set down the ease with which he spoke, for it seemed to me that I was listening to some theatric person behind the foot-lights making a speech to the pit rather than to a man who was as earnest as a man could well be.

"The truth at the root of the whole trouble is that Mr. Carmichael and I have the misfortune to love the same woman.

"I have wanted for some time to have a private talk with you, Lord Stair," he continued. "If your time is at your command, will you do me the honor to have a bottle of wine with me at the Red Cock, where we can talk with something more of ease?"

Ten minutes from that we were seated by a window of the inn, the duke on one side of a table with a bottle of his own, I on the other with a bottle of mine, while he, with a frankness impossible to a less gifted person, was dazzling me by his wisdom and his wickedness.

I wish it were possible for me to put down the gesture, the grace of language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least, state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or the clash of some great event.

"I was a poor boy," the duke began, "at fourteen, a poor Highland body with estates in a begging condition, and a sickly frame—a stoop and haggled lungs, but something, something within me that would not down, that would accept no defeat. I made this body of mine over. I trained myself until I could endure hardship like the Indians and bear pain like a stoic. It took four years of my life for this, and it was upon its completion that I began to mend the fortunes of the family. I looked out into the world with more cynical eyes than generally do the observing boys of my age, and found self-interest to be the lever which moves the human thing we call man. Man!" he cried, with a laugh. "Lord! there aren't ten men in England to-day, or do you think I would be where I am? There was shamelessness, even a touch of villainy in my creed; but it was, after all, admirably adapted to the folk with whom I had to deal. But with my fortune and my increase of power my ambition rose higher and higher. I could handle men at my will; but I began to ask myself questions as to the use of doing it at all. I was honest with myself, and I saw, I think, clearly that I got my power by using the worst in men.

"Well, my lord, I met your daughter, and it seemed to me I found she had a better power than my own. As I have said, my ambition is boundless. I desire always the best. I believe she is a fine philosopher, she can win at my own game. Oh," he interrupted himself, "I would not be setting it out to you that it's my head alone she's touched, for I am as daft in my love for her as any schoolboy could be, but I'm just telling you that, both from my ambition and my love, I want her for my wife.

"The first thing," he went on, "which I have to face beside yourself is this Carmichael man. If I had met him in any other relation in life I should have forgotten him within a fortnight; but he has been forced upon my notice—there are things about him I can not understand."

"They are his principles, perhaps," I suggested dryly.

The duke laughed aloud.

"That was worthy of Mistress Stair herself," he said, his eyes filled with laughter.

"It all comes to this in the end, John Montrose—if you know anything of women. If ye kill Dandy Carmichael you need never expect to see Nancy's face again. The boy is one of her first remembrances, and his father is almost as dear to her as I am myself. What kind of place are you making with her to kill one who, by all old ties, has become dear?"

"I've no intention of killing him," he said. "I intend to let him have a thrust at me with his sword, and then get him sent from the country for it."

I saw his plan in a minute.

"And suppose I tell Nancy what ye've just told me?" I cried.

He leaned across the table and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

"That is my power," he said, "my knowledge of people. I know your code, Lord Stair, and though I were the greatest scoundrel on earth, 'tis not in you to betray the confidence which I have reposed in you, even to help a friend."



CHAPTER XVI

NANCY STAIR ARRANGES MATTERS

I rode back to Stair, having accomplished nothing whatever with the duke, sick at heart and baffled completely by the shameless honesty of the man. Whiles I made up my mind to ride on to Arran and tell Sandy of the whole matter, and next to find Dand and see what common sense might do with him, though his deil's temper argued against any satisfaction being obtained by this move.

As I turned into the policy I was met by one of the grooms, who rode in some haste with a letter in the band of his hat. Instinct told me that his errand was relative to the trouble brewing, and I immediately jumped at a conclusion, which was that Nancy had heard of the quarrel and had sent for one or other of her fire-eating friends to come to her.

With no small interest, therefore, I watched the man close the Holm gate and set off at a breakneck speed toward Edinburgh, where the duke lay.

At the dinner I asked Nancy what she had been doing in my absence.

"I read some Fergusson and some of the rhymes of that idiot King James VI, and then I went over Mr. Pitcairn's indictment of Mungo Armstrong. Jock, it is written with the fairness of the judge himself. It is great work! He's a wonderful man, Pitcairn!" which occupations surely showed no great perturbation of mind.

After the meal she told me that she had sent for the duke "concerning some matters," and I lay on the leather couch in the hall, the very same bit of furniture, by the way, which we called Pitcairn's sofa, which made a bitter time for us all later, and fell asleep.

I was recalled to consciousness by singing in the grounds, and although the whole town knew the song, it was the first time I had ever heard it—"The Duke's Tune," it was called far and wide:



at the last note of which, Borthwicke himself, jaunty, bareheaded, and smiling, stood before Nancy in the window-way.

"How is your Royal Highness to-night?" he cried gaily.

"My Royal Highness," she replied, with a little laugh, "is not in a happy frame of mind. Things have gone very wrong with me to-day."

"Indeed?" returned his grace. "Things may be changed by human endeavor. I myself," very lightly, "have been able to change a few. It is perhaps superfluous for me to mention that my time and abilities are at your service always."

"If that be true, my troubles have disappeared entirely," Nancy returned. "They were all of your breeding. I have been thinking of your grace the day long."

"I am honored," he said.

"Perhaps you should know my thoughts before you say that. They were not complimentary in the extreme," she said, looking directly at him with very honest eyes.

"You might," and there was the caressing tone in his voice of which I have already spoken, "tell me wherein I displease you. It would be the effort of my life to change."

He came directly toward her at this, o'er close, it seemed to me, and stood looking down into her eyes, which were fixed upon his.

"You mean it?" she asked.

"By the love I bear you, the best thing my life has ever known—I mean it to the last letter. In fact, I spoke of it this afternoon to your father, Lord Stair. You've made a change in me. I'm not promising too much, but I am intending a reform of myself. Let me put it to you, not too earnestly, lest nothing come of it, but so you can get the drift of my thoughts.

"I have come to believe that your creed of love and helpfulness to every one is a stronger one than mine. It is not a proven thing to me yet, but I think one gets more in a subtler way than I can name from living by it. My head has got me so far in the working out of it. My heart——"

"Your heart will help you the most," said Nancy. "And it is there I am hoping for help from you." And here, perhaps to avoid the avowal which she felt might be coming, she took a tangent:

"Will your new wisdom carry you so far as to write a letter for me, one with your signature at the bottom?"

"It will," his grace answered, without a second's hesitation seating himself at the writing-table.

"It is for you to dictate it," he went on, with the paper spread before him, pen in hand.

"My dear Mr. Carmichael," Nancy began.

His grace started to his feet—this was far from anything for which he was prepared. So for a space they regarded each other steadily, and then I saw Nancy put her soft little hand over the one of the duke's which rested on the table; and his smile and movement of the shoulders, as though he surrendered everything at her touch, was one of the bravest bits of love-making I have ever seen.

He seated himself again, and Nancy, standing at his side, went on:

"I am writing to you to-night to ask your pardon for the entirely unworthy course which I have pursued toward you during the past six weeks."

Again the duke paused, and I could see his jaw set as he regarded the words, which were bitter enough to his palate.

"The matters which led to the quarrel between us were of my own breeding, and I wish to apologize to you for them. Sign it," said Nancy.

"I am willing," the duke answered, with an odd smile; "but, little girl, a man doesn't insult another man and then crawl out of the consequences of his act by letter. Have I your permission to effect this thing in a bit more masculine way? I promise a retraction of my conduct, and that I shall be humble enough——"

"And there will be no duel?"

"There will be no duel," Borthwicke answered, and, subtle creature that he was, he saw by the look in Nancy's face how much his yielding had gained for him with her, and seized the occasion.

"I have done this for you, as I might do any other thing for you which you might ask me, for there's one thing I want more than my life itself. Oh," he cried, and he reached out his arms toward her, "can you love me, Nancy Stair? Do you think you can love me?"

There was a pause, during which I could hear the duke's deep breathing, before she answered him.

"And that's just the thing I can't tell," she said, "for I don't know myself. You know the understanding that I have with Danvers Carmichael. I am fond of him, perhaps fonder of him than any other; but there is no disguising the fact from myself that at times you attract me more."

The duke laughed aloud in spite of the strain of the moment.

"You are an honest little soul," he cried, with genuine appreciation.

"I try to be," she answered.

"Well, well," he went on, temporizing, "a year is a year. We shall see. But in the meantime, my sins are forgiven me?"

"Entirely," she answered.

"There is usually some token of forgiveness, is there not?" he went on, as he stood, erect, hypnotic, and compelling, looking down at her.

She did the thing for which he was least prepared, by putting her hand lightly on his forehead for an instant.

"Te absolvo," she said, after the manner of the church.

And although one could see that he was disappointed, he smiled at her, and the smile had something in it of pleasure, too, for he of all men was surely the one to believe that "the fruit which could fall without shaking was ever too mellow" for him, and enjoyed, to mix a metaphor, the pleasures of the chase.

Although the trouble seemed to pass by in this happy fashion, I had so little faith in his Grace of Borthwicke that, the morning for which I knew the duel had been set, I rose early and rode by the Old Bridge Road to see if anything concerning it were on foot.

Finding nothing but the silence of the morning and a few country folk on the way to market, I rode on to the town, where to my astonishment I came into the midst of a party just leaving the Star and Garter with evidences of conviviality plain upon them. The first I saw were Billy Deuceace and Sir Patrick Sullivan, and behind them Danvers, Dr. McMurtrie, Stewart of MacBrides, and his Grace of Borthwicke, all of them seemingly upon the best of terms with each other and themselves, leaving me to ride back to breakfast at Stair with the first appetite I had had for hard upon a week.

In the afternoon of that same day I met Billy Deuceace, and after some questioning, which showed the knowledge I had of the matter, he said:

"It was a compact between us that the affair should die in silence, but I think I can say to you, Lord Stair, in honor, that his grace behaved most handsomely in the matter—most handsomely," he repeated.



CHAPTER XVII

"THE SWAP O' RHYMING WARE"

The day following this event I was called into the Mearns to look after some property which by reason of an entail had been thrust into my hands. Nancy had planned to accompany me, but the post brought her news that a German cousin of royalty, who was making a tour of the country, was intending a visit to the lace-making place on the Burnside, and Father Michel's word being for her presence at Stair, she gave over the trip, and watched me set off with Hugh Pitcairn, a bit saddened, I thought, at the pleasure of the jaunt being taken from her.

"A fine lassie!" Hugh said, looking back at her from the coach window, "who will do what's right, as she sees it, whether she gains or loses by it herself. A woman whose word can be believed as another's oath; who has a thought for the general good, apart from her own emotions; with something of the old Roman in her sense of justice. Ah," he went on in his egotism, "she shows training. All women should be taught the law—something might be made of them then."

I was employed in looking over some unread mail which I had with me while Hugh was laying these flattering unctions to his soul, and came at this point upon a letter from one Hastings, an American from the village of Boston in North America, offering in a kind sure way to marry my daughter Nancy if he could have my consent. He was a flat-faced, bigoted Anglo-Saxon, and a creature seemingly designed to drive a woman of any wideness of judgment into a frenzy, and I grinned with delight as I handed the letter to Hugh for his perusal.

He read it stolidly and returned it to me, uncommented upon, but further down the road I could see he was turning Nancy's affairs over in his mind, for he broke out, with some disjointedness:

"I have always held it a wise arrangement of nature to make women of notable mentality of a dry and unseductive nature, and pretty women fools; for if one person held beauty and charm as well as power and grasp, there is no telling but she could overthrow governments and work a wide and general mischief. We've much to thank God for," he continued, "that Nancy Stair is as she is."

The third day of my stay at Alton I received a special post which put me into some fret of mind. The letter was from Nancy, and is set below entire:

"MY VERY DEAREST:

"I miss you and am lonesome; for the lady is not coming about the lace-making, although she sent a command for many pounds' worth of work, and Father Michel is much pleasured by that.

"I have just had a letter from Janet McGillavorich. 'Seeing that ye write,' she says, 'ye may be interested in a plowman-poet that we have down here, whose name has made some noise in this part of the country. His name is Burns, an Ayr man, and the gentry are a' makin' much of him. Well, any time ye've the fancy, ye can look out of the spence window and see heedless Rab Burns, his eyes a-shine like twa stars, coming over the braeside, drunk as a laird, roaring out, 'How are thy servants, blessed, O Lord,' having spent the night Gude alane kens wheer. God kens and most of the neighbors, too, when you come to think about it, for the lad has a Biblical shamelessness for his misdeeds, and what he forgets to tell himself (and that's little enough) he goes home and writes out for all the parish to read. So if ye'd like a crack wi' him, just come right down, now your father's left ye, and I'll have him till dinner with you, and you can bob at each ither to your heart's content.'

"Isn't it strange, Jock, that a thing I have wanted so long should just happen by, as it were? And so I'm off for Mauchline to-morrow, with Dickenson, whose silence bespeaks a shrewish disapproval, and will write how Mr. Burns and I get on at some soon date.

"Give my love to Mr. Pitcairn, and tell him the prints are full of his new book.

"Danvers Carmichael has not been here since the time you know of, and the Duke of Borthwicke is on some sudden business to the Highlands.

"With my heart held in my hands toward you,

"Your own child,

[Signed: Nancy Stair]

In a green tabby velvet, laced with silver, and a huge feathered hat, Nancy set out from Stair about eight in the morning with Dame Dickenson in the Stair coach, driven by Patsy MacColl. By a change of horse at Balregal, she arrived at Mauchline just as the lamp-lighter was going his rounds, and the coach was turning by the manse when a serving-man, evidently heavy with the business, came toward the vehicle, signalling.

"Are ye for Mrs. McGillavorich?" cries he.

"Ay," Patsy answered.

"Well, I'm put here to tell ye that her house fell into the cellar of itself the morn, and she's at the 'King's Arms,' where 'tis her wish your young lady should be fetched at once."

Amazed at this sudden announcement, Patsy drove a short distance farther, where, as directed by the stranger, he stopped before a small two-story dwelling, unpretentious, but exceedingly clean and respectable in appearance, where Mrs. Todd, the landlady, showed Nancy into the living room.

It was a quaint old chamber, with wooden walls, beamed ceiling and a great stone fireplace, the lugs coming out on each side to form a seat, with candles lighted in a row upon the mantel-shelf. There was a spinet in one corner; a set of shelves filled with shining cups and saucers between the low white-curtained windows; while a fire from huge logs filled the chimney place and threw a dancing light over the polished floor, half hidden by a thick home-spun carpet, and as was the custom of the time, lighted candles had been set between the drawn white curtains to guide any uncertain traveller to his destination.

When Nancy entered, blinded by the sudden light, it was her thought that the apartment was empty, but here the devil had taken his throw in the game, for sitting in the far corner at a small table, with a jug and writing materials between them, were two men, the darker of whom would every little while scribble something off, handing that which he had written to the other, who would roar aloud and clap him on the shoulder, and both would drink again.

Nancy stood irresolute before the fire, not knowing what to do, when the darker man came forward from his place, as though to offer assistance, but at sight of her he drew back in amazement, and as Mrs. Todd bustled into the room at the moment, with many courtesies, to escort her up to Mrs. McGillavorich, no word passed between the two; but the man stood watching after her as she ascended the winding stairs.

"We're in a frightful state, my dear," Mrs. McGillavorich cried to her from the landing. "A frightful state. But the house went down too late to let ye know that for your own comfort ye'd best stay at home. We'll make ourselves comfortable here; and I've ordered a chicken pie for you, which is browned to a turn, and a jelly stir-about; and this evening we'll have a merry time, for they say Burns is in the house this instant."

"Ah," she went on, peering from the window, "ye got here just in the nick of time; for the wind's roaring from the west, and when a storm comes from that direction it's like to set by us for a long time."

After the supper, served in her own apartment, was by with, the strange old lady went on:

"And now we'll go down to the spence, where ye can meet Mr. Burns. And because your father's a kent man in these parts and your own name sounding through the country as well, I'll give out that ye're my niece, and it's in that way ye can be known."

So, attended by Dickenson, carrying her many wraps and comforters, with Nancy following, Mrs. McGillavorich entered upon Burns and his companion, whom they found drinking and writing exactly as Nancy had left them.

"I'd like to make you known to my niece, Miss McGillavorich," said Mrs. Janet, advancing toward him. "From Edinburgh," she added.

He threw a hasty unconvinced glance at Nancy, but bowed low as one used to gentle ways.

"I am new come from Edinburgh myself," he said, after presenting his friend, whom he named Mr. Hamilton. "It's a braw town. Have ye lived there long?" he asked.

"Some years," Nancy answered; "although I was not born there."

"There are fine country places all about it, too," he continued, "out the Pentland way."

"Yes," she answered; "I've seen them."

"And do you know many people in the city? I've met in with some notable folk on my sojourn there. The Monboddos, the Glencairns, and the Gordons are grand people."

"I've heard their names," Nancy returned, in a non-committal way.

"They've been kind to me," he went on, with a bit of conceit in his manner, "most kind. The ladies especially," he added.

"So?" said Nancy. "That must be very comforting to you," she added, with a twinkle in her eye.

"It is," was the unexpected answer, given with a droll look. "And I like to hear them sing my songs. Have ye heard Bonnie Dundee? It's not printed yet."

"No," she answered, "but I could catch it. I sing a little. Could ye sooth it to me, Mr. Burns?"

"Nay, nay," said Janet, "no music or singing yet; not till Mr. Burns has given us something of his own. We'll have Dickenson brew us a bowl of lemon punch, and we'll draw the curtains and gather the fire, and Mr. Burns will line us the Cotter's Saturday Night, the sensiblest thing writ for a long time, before ye sing us a song, my dear."

And the old lady being set, there was nothing to do but to abide her way of it; and thus by the fire, with the elements raising a din outside, the five of them listened to the great man, who was not too great, however, to turn the whole battery of his compelling personality upon Nancy Stair, nor to look at her from the uplifted region in which he dwelt during the recital to see what effect he had upon her, for he had already learned "his power over ladies of quality."

God knows if any of those, even Burns himself, who were gathered about the fire that night dreamed that, as I believe now, those lines would echo down the ages, nor that the time was coming when that evening might be a thing to boast upon and hand the memory of to children and to children's children as a precious heirloom:

"November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh: The shortening winter-day is at its close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, The black'ning trains o'craws to their repose:——"

And at the end, fed perhaps by the adulation of their faces, as well as their spoken words, he laid some open flattery to himself upon the way he'd been received in town and at the noise his name was making there at the time, and stirred Nancy's sense of humor, which, Heaven is a witness, needed little to move it at any time.

"A'weel, a'weel," she said at length, "I make verses myself, Mr. Burns."

"Say you so!" he cried; "and that's a surprise to me! Would you word us one of your poems?" he asked, laughingly.

"I sing mine," she says, going over to the spinet.

"And that's finer still!" he cried.

"They're not like yours," an apology in her voice; "just off-hand rhymes like, that come to my head on the moment. If you could sooth me Bonnie Dundee now, I might rhyme something to it," and the minute he began, she said:

"Oh! I know that—'tis an old tune, like this"—and striking a chord or two, she was off before the rest had any guess of her intention, with a merry devil in her eye and her face glowing like a flower in the firelight:

"At 'The King's Arms' in Mauchline, Rab Burns said to me, 'I'm just back from Edinbro' as you may see, Where all the gay world has been bowin' to me, For I am the lad who wrote Bonnie Dundee! And just for a smile or a glance of my eye The lassies are ready to lie down and die; So don't give yourself airs, but just bow before me, For I am the lad who wrote Bonnie Dundee!'

"Now a'weel, Mr. Burns, I have somewhat to say I've sweethearts as many as you any day; And I've eyes of my own, as you've noticed, maybe, If you've glanced from the author of Bonnie Dundee! And Duncan of Monteith my suitor has been, And Stewart of MacBride's, who has served to the Queen. And if any one bows, it will sure not be me, For I don't give a groat who wrote Bonnie Dundee!"

The laugh which followed this found Burns at her side, every passion in his inflammable nature alight.

"Aye," he cried, "ye have the verse makin'. But the e's are easy. Why didn't ye try the Doon. 'Tis as celebrate."

"Sure," she answered, "there are rhymes begging for that. Tune, soon, rune, June——"

"And loon," Burns threw in, daffing with her. "Ye wouldn't be forgetting that."

"It was not my intention to be leaving the author of the piece out of it," she threw back at him, laughing, at which Burns gave her a look.

"You'd better mend your manners," he cried, gaily, "or some day I'll take my pen in hand to you, and then, may the Lord have mercy on your soul!" adding low, "Mistress Nancy Stair!"

Some consternation followed upon this, for it was unknown by any of them that he had seen Nancy in Edinbro', and after the talk was readjusted a bit to the news, the five of them, with Mrs. Todd listening on the other side of the door, sat till hard upon one o'clock, with uplifted minds, insensible to time or weather.

The extreme disorder caused by the wind, for the storm had risen, at length recalled them to themselves, and Mrs. Todd, who worshiped the great poet, came in.

"You must lie here to-night, Mr. Burns," she said hospitably; and as the poet lighted Nancy up the stair:

"Good night," he cried, "good night!" and then, because there was a devil in the man whenever he looked at a pretty woman, "I'll have no sleep to-night. I'm in some far-up region where poems are made and where all the women are like you!"

For three days the horrid weather kept them housebound; three days in which Nancy and Robert Burns lived in dangerous nearness to each other, considering her youth, her temperament, and the passion of admiration which she held for him; three days of poetry and folk-tales and ballad-singing, with the man's dangerous magnetism at work between them.

It was on the afternoon of this third day that a girl passed the window near which Burns sat, and beckoning to him, he slammed out into the storm, with no prefacing word to his act whatever, leaving Nancy staring after him in amazement, as she said to Mr. Hamilton:

"Do you not think his manners are strange?"

"The Edinburgh people say that he had them straight from his Maker," Mr. Hamilton answered, evading an opinion of his own.

"It's no saying much for the breeding of the Almighty," she answered, off-hand, with a smile, and she held silence concerning the matter, although it was near upon four days before Burns entered the inn door again, his face pale and haggard, his eyes sunken, and lines of dissipation upon his handsome face, which every one by courtesy passed over uncommented. He brought a volume of Shenstone with him, which he laid before Nancy as a gift.

"I am bringing you one of the great of the earth," he said, gloomily regarding the book, and Nancy, who read his thoughts and wanted from the heart to cheer him, said:

"I whiles wonder at you, Mr. Burns, and the way you go about admiring every tinker-peddler who tosses a rhyme together. Ye've no sense of your own value at times. Do you know," she went on, fair glorious to see in her enthusiasm glowering down at him—"Do you know that when this man Shenstone's grave is as flat to the earth as my hand, and his name forgot, people will be building monuments to you and raising schools for your memory. Why," she cried, in an ecstasy, "'tis you that have made our old mother Scotland able to hold up her head and look the whole world in the face when the word 'Poetry' is called."

"Ye think so?" he asked, the tears big in his eyes, his gloom put behind him. "It's music to hear ye praise me so," and he rose and leaned against the mantel-shelf, his face irradiated by its usual expression.

"Perhaps," he began with some hope, "when I say farewell to rakery once and for all, I may make something fine yet. Most men, Mistress Stair, shake hands with that irresponsible wench called Pleasure, but I have dallied too long, I fear, in her intoxicating society. Aye!" he finished, "Wisdom's late upon the road!"[5]

[5] It is strange to note that there is scarce a word spoken by Burns in all of Lord Stair's manuscript which can not be found directly or indirectly in the poet's prose or verse—EDITOR.

"Let's make a poem of it! It sounds like one!" she cried, moving toward the spinet.

"Take your own gate," says Burns, laughing; "I'll follow!"

"I'll take the first lines," she said gayly. "'Twill throw the brunt of the rhyming on you."

"You're o'er thoughtful," Burns laughed back at her, and Nancy began rhyming to an old tune the thought they had passed between them, with Burns ready with his rhymes before her lines were entirely spoken:

Nancy

"At break o' day, one morn o' May, While dew lay silverin' all the lea";

Burns

"A lassie fair, wi' gowden hair Came laughing up the glen to me."

Nancy

"Her face was like the hawthorn bloom, Her eyes twa violets in a mist,"

Burns

"Her lips were roses of the June, The sweetest lip's that e'er were kissed."

Nancy

"'O, what's your name and where's your hame? My sweetest lassie, tell me true.'"

Burns

"'My name is Pleasure,' sir, she said, 'And I hae come to live with you.'"

Nancy

"She took my face between her hands, And sat her down upon my knee."

Burns

"She put her glowing lips to mine, And oh, but life was sweet to me."

Nancy

"Wi' mony a song we roved along My arm all warm about her waist."

Burns

"The hours drunk wi' love's golden wine Unheeded ane anither chased."

"Ah!" Nancy cried here, "That's the Burns touch! I could never have done that!"

Nancy

"Her hair's gay gold, in many a fold, Unheeded on my shoulder lay."

Burns

"Her heart beat on my very own, And life and love were one that day."

Nancy

"When noon was highest up in air, An ancient man came on the road."

Burns

"And when he saw my loving fair, His eyes wi' fiercest anger glowed."

Nancy

"'And who is this,' he cried to me, 'That you have ta'en wi' you to dwell?'"

Burns

"'Her name is Pleasure,' sir, said I, 'And oh, I'm sure she loves me well.'"

Nancy

"'Rise up,' he cried, 'no more defer To leave a wench not over nice.'"

Burns

"'She's Pleasure till ye wed wi' her, Her name she changes then to Vice.'"

Nancy

"I got me up from where I lay, And turned me toward the darkened land."

Burns

"'Adieu,' she said, wi' no dismay, And waved toward me her lily hand."

* * * * *

Nancy

"The time was set, and then we met, Old Wisdom came, and now we part."

Burns

"'Ye gang your gate, ye'll soon forget, Nor think,' said she, 'twill break my heart.'"

Nancy

"'There's something strong within ye both, That's makes ye tire of such as me."

Burns

"'But I'm as I was made,' she quoth, 'And how much better, sirs, are ye?'"

"There's a deal of philosophy in that," cried Hamilton. "I must have a copy."

And it was from his paper that I got the lines as I set them above.



CHAPTER XVIII

I GO DOWN TO MAUCHLINE

Of all this rhyming gaiety, it will be remembered, I had no knowledge at the time, being still at Alton, chafing under the business in hand, and awaiting each post, as the days went by, with a beating heart and the expectancy of some unworded trouble.

The twelfth day passing without news, I cut the end of my business off altogether, and started for Stair, it being my thought that Nancy's visiting would be ended and that I should find her there awaiting my return. The home-coming was a dreary one, the house darkened and unsociably redd up, and I sat alone to a dinner, served me by Huey, in a depth of gloom and melancholy which he had never reached before, debating whether to write to Mauchline or to go down myself the following morning.

While turning the matter over in my mind, Mr. Francis Hastings's name was brought in to me, and the humor of the situation struck me with some force, for here was a girl partially engaged to two men, off visiting a third, with a fourth clamoring at the door to be her husband.

"Come in," I cried heartily to the large-faced young man when he appeared at the doorway. "I'm glad to see ye, Mr. Hastings. Will ye have a glass with me?" and I pushed the decanter toward him.

"You doubtless know my errand, Lord Stair," he said, refusing the brandy by a shake of the head. "You had my letter?"

"Some time since, but I put off answering it, thinking—" I hesitated; the truth being that the matter had passed clean from my mind after reading the epistle—"thinking a talk would be better."

"Have you any objections to me?" he asked, coming straight to the point.

I had a great many, but it was scarce possible to name them under the circumstances, and I shuffled a bit.

"To be frank," said I, "there are obstacles."

"What are they?" he asked, and the conceit in his tone conveyed the thought that for the honor of an alliance with him obstacles should be overcome.

"Well," said I, "there's Mr. Danvers Carmichael, who is perhaps the chief one; and his Grace of Borthwicke, another; and Duncan of Monteith, and McMurtree of Ainswere—and others whose names I could set before you."

"And does she love any of these?" he asked.

"She has not taken me into her confidence," I answered; "but my honest advice to you is to forget all about her."

"I think," he said, testily, "with your permission, I shall ask her myself."

"Yes, yes! Do!" And as I thought of all that would probably come to him for his audacity I urged it still further: "Do, by all means!" I cried.

He had scarce gone from the house, and I was still laughing a bit over the affair, when Huey, with a changed face and an excited voice, came back to me from the kitchen.

"There's a man, hard ridden, in the doorway with a letter which he will give to none but your lordship," said he, adding the thing which told the reason for his pale face and hurried voice: "He's from Mauchline."

A premonition of evil came over me, and as the fellow handed me the billet a sudden chill and shaking seized my body, so that I was forced to put the letter upon the table to keep the writing steady enough for me to see. It was from Janet McGillavorich, short to exasperation, and, with no set beginning, read as follows:

"Nancy is taken ill and lies delirious at the King's Arms in Mauchline. We have a doctor here, but I have become alarmed, for it is now the fourth day that she has been unconscious. I think it better to let you know just how matters stand, and to ask that ye come down yourself immediately upon receipt of this and bring Dr. McMurtrie with you.

"In haste,

"JANET MCGILLAVORICH."

If it be recalled that I had at this time no knowledge of the accident to Janet's old house, could surmise no reason for Nancy's lying at a public inn, and was in an agony of fear for her life, the wretched state of my mind can well be understood; but I was still capable of quick action, and within an hour Dr. McMurtrie, the end of his dinner carried in a bag, and myself were upon the Mauchline road.

The crawling of the coach through the darkness, the insane waits for horses, the many necessary but time-consuming details told upon my distraught mind to such an extent that when I descended at the door of the inn I felt an old and broken man. The memory of another ride which I had taken was heavy upon me, my teeth chattered, the horror showing in my face so plainly that Dame Dickenson read my thought on the instant, and coming forward, plucked me by the sleeve.

"She's better," she said, and at the sound of the words I put my head on the table and wept like a child.

Our presence being made known to Mrs. McGillavorich, she came down immediately, with a white face and tired, sleepless eyes.

"She's having the first sleep in three days," she said, "and the old doctor thinks the worst is by. But ye'd best not disturb her. Let her bide quiet now."

Dr. McMurtrie and I took turns by the bedside that day and night, but she knew neither of us, lying, in her waking moments, with scarlet cheeks and wide, delirious eyes, singing snatches of songs, weaving meaningless words together, and crying over and over again, "It's of no use—no use—no use," in a kind of eldritch sing-song which wrung my heart.

"She's had some kind of a shock," Dr. McMurtrie said, "one that she'll be some time getting over, I fear."

As to the cause of the trouble the whole house was as mystified as myself.

"I know as little of the reason of her illness as you do yourselves." Janet said, after she had narrated the doings at the inn. "On Tuesday, a little after noon, she came to me saying that she'd been in such an excited state, she was off alone to collect herself by a walk, and while she was out she passed a girl who was putting some linen on the bleach-green; Nancy spoke to her concerning some lace with which the garments were trimmed, and as they talked Rab Burns passed them, with four or five of his cronies, and the girl broke into a passion at sight of him, shaking her fist after him and calling him foul names as he went down the lane.

"At this, another girl, who was soon to be a mother, came weeping from the house, and Nancy emptied her purse to them before they parted.

"When she came in," Janet went on, "her face was white and set, her eyes seeing nothing, and when Rab Burns sent up his name to her that night she said to the maid, 'Tell Mr. Burns that Miss Stair will not see him!' and sat by the window, staring into the starlight, where I found her at five the next morning with the fever upon her and her wits gone gyte."

I have had much sorrow in my time, but the agony of suspense and suspicion with which the next few days were filled pales every grief of my life that went before this time. Was it possible, I asked God, that my wee bit, wonderful lassie, my Little Flower, had bloomed to be trodden under foot by a plowman of Ayr?

McMurtrie drove me from the house at times for rest of mind as well as exercise, and one night, at the week's end, having walked farther than usual, I entered an ale-house in the Cowgate for something to quench my thirst. There was a man standing by the window, and at sight of him, for it was Robert Burns, and the time was not yet come for me to say to him what might have to be said, I drew back, thinking myself unseen, and closed the door. I had gone but a few steps in the darkness when I felt a hand clapped on my shoulder, and turning, found Burns himself beside me.

"Come back," he cried, "come back; I want a word with ye, Lord Stair. You've come down," he cried, "to take your daughter from the company of those unfit for her to know. And you're right in it. But the thought that ye showed toward me when you went out to avoid my company is wrong; wrong, as I must face my Maker in the great last day! I've had my way with women; but in this one case I've taken such care of her as ye might hae done yourself!

"She's found the truth of me, and our friendship is by with forever! I know that well.

"But tell her from me, will ye not, that such righting of a wrong as can be done I am determined to do, and that the lassie she kens of is to be my wife as soon as she chooses. Tell her," and here the tears stood big in his eyes, "that I am sorrier than I can ever say that her mind has been assoiled by my wicked affairs—" and here he broke forth into a sudden heat—"God Almighty!" he cried, "if a woman like that had loved me, Shakespeare would have had to look to his laurels. Aye! and Fergusson, too. The Lord himself made me a poet, but she might have made me a man!"[6]

[6] Lord Stair mentions here that he afterward had from this same girl (Mrs. Nellie Brown), the following description of the poet's first meeting with the sister, Jean Armour:

"D'ye see Sam McClellan's spout over the gate there? Weel, it was just whaur Rab and Jean first foregathered. Her and me had gaen there for a gang o' water, an' I had fill't my cans first an' come ower here juist whaur you an' me's stan'in. When Jean was fillin' her stoups, Rab Burns cam' up an' began some nonsense or ither wi' her, an' they talked an' leuch sae lang that it juist made me mad; to think, tae, that she should ha'e a word to say wi' sic a lowse character as Rab Burns. When she at last cam' ower, I gied her a guid hecklin. 'Trowth,' said I, 'Jean, ye ocht to think black-burnin' shame o' yersel. Before bein' seen daffin' wi' Rab Burns, woman, I would far raither been seen speakin'—to a sodger.' That was the beginnin' o' the unfortunate acquaintance."

The marriage between the two was acknowledged to the world in 1787.—EDITOR.



CHAPTER XIX

THE QUARREL BETWEEN DANVERS AND NANCY

We were back at Stair for nearly a fortnight, with Nancy quite herself again, before she took me into her confidence regarding the Burns experience. Leaning against the wall by the stair-foot with her hands behind her, a way she'd had ever since she was a wee bit, the talk began, with no leading up to it on either side.

"Jock," she said, suddenly, and a quaint look came over her face, "I've never told you what made me ill at Mauchline."

"I've been waiting," I answered.

"It was a bad time for me," she continued.

"I know that, Lady-bird," said I.

"Part of me died," she said, and on this a thought flashed by me which, I have often held, that in some way her language expressed more than she knew.

"I've been filled up with conceit of myself," she went on, "and I got punished for it."

"There was never a woman living with less!" I cried, so sodden in my affection for her that I could not stand to hear her blamed, even by herself.

"Maybe I didn't show it," she said with a smile, "but I've always held, 'in to mysel',' that the gifted folk were God's aristocrats, and the day I told Danvers Carmichael and you my esteem of lords and titles and forbears I said just what I thought, though both of you laughed at me, for I reasoned that any one whom the Almighty took such special pains with must have the grand character as well. And so I made of all the people who write and paint and sing a great assembly, like Arthur's knights, who were over the earth righting wrongs and helping the weak. Then came the Burns book; and there are no words to tell the glory of it to me. All the great thoughts I had dreamed were written there, and before the power of this man, who took the commonest things of life and wrote them out in letters of gold, I felt as one might before the gods. It was of Burns I thought in my waking hours, and 'twas of him I dreamed by night; and I thanked God to be born in his country and his time, so that I might see one, from the people, who had, in its highest essence, the thing we call genius.

"But always, always," she interrupted, smiling, "with the conceit of myself which I mentioned before. Because God had given me a little gift, I believed that I was in some degree a chosen creature, a bit like the Burns man himself.

"The first time I talked with him at the inn I felt his power, his charm; but there was something in his ways to which I had never been accustomed in men—a certain freedom, which I put by, however, as one of the peculiarities of his gift.

"Well," she said, coming over and burying her face in my breast, "it took me but two weeks to discover that the thing we call genius has no more to do with a person's character than the chair he sits in; that a man can write like a god and live like the beasts in the fields. Can speak of Christian charity like the disciples of old, and hold the next person who offends him up to the ridicule of the whole parish! That he can write lines surpassing—aye!" she cried, "surpassing Polonius's advice to his son, and leave them uncopied on an ale-house table to go off with the first loose woman who comes by, and be carried home, too drunk to walk, the next morning, roaring out hymns about eternal salvation.

"And after I met the Armour girl, and found the harm that Burns had brought to her, my idol fell from its clay feet, and I was alone in a strange country, with my gods gone, and my beliefs in shreds around me.

"But I have made my readjustments. I am humbled. I see how little value verse-making holds to the real task of living, and I am a better woman for what I have been through. I have learned—almost losing my mind over the lesson," she interjected, with her own bright smile—"the value of the solid virtues of life; and I've come to the conclusion that it is harder to be a gentleman than a genius. God makes one, but a man has the handling of the other upon himself. Danvers Carmichael," she continued, looking up at me, "is a gentleman. His word is his bond. He considers others, respects woman and honors her; controls his nature, and has a code of conduct which he would rather die than break. Ah!" she said, "I have had a bitter time; but it's taught me to appreciate that in the real things of life—the things for which we are here, love, home, and the rearing of children—genius has about as much part as the royal Bengal tiger. It's beautiful to look at, but dangerous to trifle with, and,"—here she smiled at her own earnestness for a second as she started up the stairs—"and here endeth the first lesson, my Lord of Stair!"

I was in no way sorry as to her conclusions about the value of verse-making, for I had seen that her continual mental excitement was sapping her vitality; and I closed my eyes to sleep that night with a feeling of gratitude to my Heavenly Father that the Burns business was by with forever.

* * * * *

Toward noon of the next day I discovered my mistake. Smoking by the fire in the chimney corner of the hall, I heard a clattering of horses' hoofs on the gravel outside, and from the window saw Danvers Carmichael throw the reins to his groom, run up the steps of the main entrance, and ask for Miss Stair in a voice strangely unlike his usual one. I knew that Nancy was sitting with some lace-work in her own writing-room, and hoped much from their meeting, and that her recent experience, which made her set a new value on Danvers, would bring about a more complete understanding between them.

"Ah, Dandy!" said Nancy, her voice having a ring of pleasure in it. "When did you return from Glasgow?"

"Late yesterday," he answered. "I dined at the club in town and rode home about ten. I'm thinking of leaving Arran for a time," he said, coldly.

"Why didn't you stop?" she asked, with some surprise.

"I was in no mood for visiting last night."

"You were ill, or worried?" Nancy inquired anxiously.

"Worried, ill," he answered. "Ill, and ashamed, and miserable, in a way, please God, most men may never know."

"What is it, Dandy?" and I saw that at his vehemence she put her work on the table and moved toward him.

"Oh!" he cried out, "it's you! It's you! In the month before I went away I had to endure God only knows what bitterness because of you! And on my return last night I hear at the club that ye've been off in Ayrshire visiting Robert Burns! Did ye have a pleasant time?" he asked, glowering down at her from his great height, handsome and angrier than I had ever seen him before.

The tone rather than the words struck fire immediately, and Nancy's eyes took a peculiar significance, boding little good to the one with whom she was having dealings.

"Very pleasant," she answered, in a voice of ice, picking up her work and reseating herself.

"Before I went away," Danvers continued, "there was little in the way of humiliation which I had not endured at your hands! I've seen ye play fast and loose with half the men in Edinbro'—aye, in the whole of Scotland, it seems to me! I have heard your name coupled more often than I can tell with that of the greatest scoundrel in Scotland, and have held silence concerning it; and when things came to that pass that none could endure it and I struck him; how was the affair settled. By your sending for him!—for him!" he fairly screamed, "while I, your betrothed husband almost, was left in ignorance that ye knew of the matter at all.

"And at the time of the meeting in the Holm, what does the damned scoundrel do but come forth with his friends and apologize for his conduct with seeming generosity, naming the whole business the result of a crusty temper of his own, apologizing handsomely, and in a devilish open way, ending by saying:

"'One who is dear to me has shown me my faults, and I am doing her bidding, as well as fulfilling my own sense of justice, in asking your pardon!' And at the mention of you he took off his hat and spoke as one who performs an obligation to another who has a right to demand it.

"You can perhaps see the light in which I was placed! Even my own friends went over to the duke's side, and I was forced to shake his damned hand and join him at the Red Cock for breakfast or show a surly front by my refusal. I was made a laughing stock for the whole party. Put in the wrong in every way; and even Billy Deuceace, a man of penetration, was so deceived by this, that afterward he bade me, with a laugh, 'fight about women who were in love with me and not with other men.'"

During this rehearsal of his wrongs Nancy sat quietly embroidering, not looking at the speaker nor seeming to note the voice at all.

"I said nothing of the affair to you," he continued; "I thought to let the thing go by, and went off to Glasgow, hoping to forget it before we met again. And what do I come back to? To learn that half the town has it that you've visited an inn in another county and spent your days, aye, and I suppose they say your nights, too, with Rab Burns, whom decent folk will not let their daughters know. At tales like this the affair takes on another complexion. I do not want a wife for myself, nor a mother for my children, whose name has been bandied about like that!"

He was so beside himself with rage and jealousy and the further present annoyance of Nancy's inattention, that he raised his voice at the end to a tone of harshness, such as none had ever used to Nancy Stair, and which she was the last woman to stand patient under. She did the thing by instinct which would enrage him most, putting a thread to her needle, squinting up one eye as she did so, in a composed and usual manner, and letting a silence fall before she said, in a level and unemotional voice:

"Sit down, Dandy, and stop shouting. There's no use getting the town-guard out because you chance not to want me any longer for a wife. You don't have to have me, you know!"

He seemed somewhat dashed by this, and there was a pause, during which he took a paper from his pocket and cast it on the table before her.

"No," he says, "and that's very true; but for your own sake as the Lord of Stair's daughter, I'd write no more verses like these. God!" he cried, "to think of that white-faced American having a thing like that from you!"

"What's the matter with the writing?" she said, looking down at it as though its literary merit were the thing he questioned. "Mr. Hastings," she explained, "had an old song called the Trail of the Gipsies, and he rather flouted me because I set such store by it, but had it lined and sent me with some flowers. On the minute of their coming, and with the thought of how little the Anglo-Saxon comprehends any race save his own, I wrote these lines. I see no harm in them!"

As Nancy read the poem[7] over she looked up with the same curious look.

[7] A thousand thanks for the verses, And the thoughts that they bring from you, But it's only a gipsy-woman Who can feel how the trail holds true.

You of the Pilgrim fathers, With your face so proud and pale, And the birth born pain of a fettered brain, What can ye know of the trail?

By the lawless folk who bore me, By their passion and pain, and loss, By their swords which strove and their Lights o' Love, I've a right to the gipsy cross.

* * * * *

Poems by Nancy Stair. Edinburgh Edition, 1796.

"What's the matter with it?" she asked again.

"The matter with it?" he repeated after her. "It's a thing no lady should ever have thought, and no woman should ever have written."

"Ye think so?" she said, and there was an amused tolerance in her voice as of discussing a mature subject with a child, adding in a tone as remote as if speaking of the Tenant Act, "Your opinions are always interesting, Dand."

"Interesting to you they may or may not be, but it's just come to this: A young woman who continues the relations you do with the greatest scoundrel on earth; who writes verses immoral in tone to one man and visits another for weeks in an ale-house—but," and here he broke off suddenly, "you may know no better with your rearing."

"Miss Erskine will perhaps have been telling you what it is customary for young ladies to do," Nancy suggested, in a dangerous, level voice.

"I do not need telling. It's a thing about which right-thinking people will agree without words," he answered; and it was here that Nancy spoke in her own voice, though heated by anger, and with the words coming faster than ordinary.

"And that's maybe true," she said; "but there are other things to be considered. It has always been in my mind that most marriages are very badly made up," she said. "That in this greatest of all affairs between a man and a woman people lose their wits and trust to a blind kind of attraction for each other. I have thought to use my head a bit more in the matter. The very fact that you are misunderstanding me now as you do goes far to prove how foolish a marriage between us would have been."

"Heavens!" he cried, "you talk of marriage as though it were a contract between two shop-keepers to be argle-bargled over. It's an affair of the heart, not of the head. Ye've never loved me," he said bitterly, "or ye'd know that."

"That may be true," Nancy answered, mutinously. "I have tried to be fair to you, however, and not to let you have a wife who didn't know her own mind. I am, as you reminded me, different from other women in many ways. I like many——"

"I've noted that," he interrupted with scant courtesy.

"And I'm afraid I shall continue to like them for one thing or another till the end; and you're of a jealous turn, Danvers," she said, coldly.

"I have been," he said. "Where you were concerned I haven't a generous thought. I take shares in my wife with no man. I have been jealous of the sound of your voice, the glance of your eye. What I have had to endure because of this ye must surely have seen! When a woman loves a man she has no thought for another——"

"It's may be so," Nancy broke in, "but it's as entirely beyond me as flying. If I loved you with all there is of me, and another came by with a bit of a rhyme, or a new tale, or a plan quite of his own thinking, the chances are many that you'd be clear out of my mind while he stayed."

"'Tis fortunate, as you say," he interrupted, "that we discover this before 'tis too late. I think it's a peculiarity that will go far to making the husband you take for yourself a very unhappy man."

"He will perhaps understand me better than you do," Nancy answered gently.

"Oh," he cried at this, "can't you see that a woman surrenders herself when she loves? She gives as gladly as a man takes, and is happy to have him for her lord and master. Not that he wishes to rule her, for 'twould be the thought of his life that her every desire should be filled, but she must be willing to yield."

"Ye'd have made a grand Turk," Nancy broke in, and there was a glint of humor in her tone as she spoke the words.

"I think," Danvers answered, "you'll find me asking only what most men expect to get."

"If that be true, the chances are heavy that I shall live and die unwed," she said with a laugh.

"Oh, no!" he cried, in a cutting voice. "I dare say your mind's made up as to what you intend to do! Perhaps when you're the Duchess of Borthwicke his grace will enjoy your visiting other men and writing lines like these," and he dashed his fist on the paper again.